Life of Wry

I planned to reassess the role I want to play going forward in our local political groups — Sister District and Indivisible Yolo. We had a mind blowing year of building a Zoom-based political powerhouse of effectiveness. We built an amazing community. We were successful and all that work certainly gave shape and focus to the year. Plus: scads of new friends.

Going forward, though, had rather thought I wanted to be a foot soldier, not an officer (since when do I use military analogies?). I absolutely want to keep working with both organizations, but on efforts that have beginnings and endings… like canvasing for a day, or registering voters at a community college, or writing postcards, or making calls, or writing a letter to the editor. Even attending meetings! I am more motivated than ever and convinced this work makes a huge difference and I want to be part of that solution (I certainly do more than my share of complaining.. so best to work toward positive change, ya?). I just don’t want to run the show, or have to-dos hanging over my head all the time. I just want to show up. Work passionately, and be done with that task for that moment.

Because I am desperate to make time for other pursuits. A girl’s got priorities, ya know?

No apologies. I crave more time for myself and my long list of juicy projects and pastimes.

Still, since the election, now five months ago, I’ve resisted resuming leadership on the Comms Team, but I’ve continued to make calls for the Georgia senate races, write postcards to voters in Wisconsin, attend weekly action hours, make calls to our members of congress on a variety of issues (mostly the filibuster), attend monthly meetings of both SD and IY, and work on SD’s new mission, values, vision and strategic plans for the coming year. And probably more stuff.. but that’s what comes to mind.

We seem to be reaching some clarity on where we go from here. For now, two separate orgs with distinct focuses. I’ll be a soldier in one (IY) and it looks like, for now, I’ll resume an officer role organizing the Comms Team effort for the other (SD). Even happily-ish! The leadership gang is still a great bunch and the work is worthy.

From last night’s monthly meeting — screen one of two — with new national SD executive director (and co-founder) Lala Wu, a smart, impressive, inspiring leader who makes a strong case for the power of state legislatures. There are a lot of places to plug in in this crazy political world. This one is deserving of my time.

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On a completely different topic, I just have to say I’m deeply haunted by images and testimony in the George Floyd murder trial. Today’s expert witness was a pulmonologist who made the case that GF died from a lack of oxygen, compellingly rejecting defense theories of other causes (drug, bad heart). What haunts is the footage. We know what we’re looking at. It’s a tragic, brutal case of murder, police abuse, and immense racial injustice. It’s so incredibly painful.